Note: I originally rated my final subject as a 1.5 star performance due to what I felt was excessive plagiarism. However, before I could publish this, our dictator chose to steal my triple-review format (though he admits this freely). Therefore, I awarded myself another half-star. Damn, Commies.
Okay, I’ll be honest…I’ve been slacking it on this website. Many (meaning the eight dedicated readers we have) may remember when Nate even semi-demanded me to start posting. Maybe it was because I was a little too proud (probably not), but mostly it was due to time constraints and the simple fact that I have very little occurring in my life that I consider worthy of rating or that I could make it remotely entertaining. Now that I’ve graced the pages of this website, does this mean that I’ve overcome these obstacles? Absolutely not. Unfortunately for all of us, this probably won’t stop any of our readers from continuing. So, now that I’ve managed to take advantage of what little downtime is so rarely presented to me during my endless pursuit of a respectable career, what have I chosen to review? I knew my topic had to be gripping, with bouts of violence, wit, romance, all while being constantly intelligent and entertaining. Of course, I threw all of these notions out the window when Dan decided to yet again pansy-fy me publicly (again, having readers in the single digits makes it no more public than usual, but it’s the principle that the public could eventually read it). So gather ’round as Adam recounts his version of the story.
So we were playing football the day after Thanksgiving. There were about ten people there, which is a pleasantly complete number, as any larger might encourage Dan to set up real offensive and defensive lines and eventually result in a lot of cussing. All of the Goletz siblings were there: Greg(g), Dave, and Tim. The significance being that they all share the same genetic foundations and therefore it can be inferred that Dave and Tim possess judgement skills about on par with Gregg. Dan duffed a pass (not unusual in the cold) as I was crossing over, but not looking in the general direction of the play. Following my QB’s directive I picked up what I thought to be a fumble and was quickly pushed down by my defender, one Josh “Barney” Clark (notice that had it been a fumble, I would have been ruled down by contact at that point). Landing flush on my right side, I took a moment to make sure the ball was secured, only to see Tim Gloetz run up, and jump into the air before landing on my left arm and pushing it into my chest.
To say the least, the pain was exquisite, but seemed well-focused in the upper left of my ribs, much more so than just having the wind knocked out of me. The downside to having completed the anatomy intense portion of a sorta-medical program and having not yet started the physiology intense portion is that when an injury occurs, you automatically think of everything that may have gone wrong, but have no idea how to definitively diagnose it. Big words like atelectasis, hemomediastinum, and pneumothorax began running through my head, though I couldn’t quite remember what any of them meant. Anyway, I shook off the pain after a few plays of minimal movement and went on to have Barney fall on my chest as well as Gregg, during a sports-blooper reel-worthy post-interception clobbering.
Ouch…my pride (though it looks more delicious as it is tenderized)
Skip ahead to the following Tuesday. By this time, all of my bruises had healed, yet the chest pain persisted. Worse yet, it had seemed to intensify beyond my perception of a deep muscle bruise and prevented me from accomplishing much in the department of physical activity.
All of this lead to the following conversation between a physician and me:
Dr (compressing 3rd rib): Does this hurt?
Me: Yes.
Dr (4th rib): Now?
Me: Yes.
Dr (5th rib, as I watch my chest push inward): Now?
Me: Christ! Don’t do that again!
So…yeah. I broke my left fifth rib about three centimeters from the sternum; my first professionaly-confirmed broken bone. It hurts like Hell and never seems to get better given that both treatments for it only seem to worsen the condition. Local heat, meant to increase blood flow to the area and thus facilitate healing, also increases pressure on the chest. Icing the area, meant to bring down the swelling, does so but results in the bone becoming more mobile, irritating the area and swelling yet again.
Block I (the Animal Body) of Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, receives 3.5 stars for it’s ability to cram 1.5 years of anatomy into a 2.5 month curriculum and still manages to assist students in retaining the information. Unfortunately, the program loses points due to its questionable layout in teaching students locations and relationships of organs and body systems, but waiting to explain functions/dysfunctions of said systems until well into the students second year. This inevitably leads to worry over the numerous conditions that may occur without having any information or knowledge to confirm or disprove those worries.
The 1984 model of the human ribcage receives 3 stars, based purely on its stellar reputation for protecting vital organs, yet its apparent (and hopefully rare) failure to hold its integrity after only 21 years of use. 3 stars may seem like a generous score for a product that, in all honesty, failed to meet my expectations. It’s also a scary thought to consider that the first component of the structure to fail was located in an area that, had the break been more serious, could have compromised my trachea, esophagus, heart, and lungs. However, it gains a few points given that its only failure to this date was at the hands of the Goletz brothers…who, as history has proven, serve only to destroy all that is good and bring misery to the world.
Adam’s first review receives 2 stars on account of its complete lack of focus and inability to capture the true, judgemental spirit of this website by serving to tell a story more so than constructively reviewing a topic. I mean (come on!), what’s with all the cheap shots at the Goletzs-es? Throw in the blatant plagiarism of Dan’s earlier post in an attempt to mock him, and you’ve got a pretty piss-poor review. It’s only saving grace is that it was a decent inaugural effort and displayed a touch of originality in its (once) unprecedented uber-triple-header format. Let’s hear it for obnoxiousness.
4 responses to “Block I of CUCVM, the Human Ribcage (1984 model), and Misc.”
Hallelujah! Now that’s a review.
[…] August 11th, 2006 Nate Oh, those kids. Always at it. You guys really shouldn’t’ve. So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word “milestone”, and don’t believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell. The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005… remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge? Dan’s first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled chese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”, a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan’s opinion of My opinion of “Good Night, and Good Luck”. Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn’t last, which seems to have been proven false. October seemed to be us finding our footing. November saw Dan’s Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of “Coach”, and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he’s an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth”paste” that doesn’t work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep. November didn’t see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining. December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam’s first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a suprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert’s take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing. December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews. 2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because “Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego”, and “The Simpsons” after season 9 is so easy to complain about. January’s topics fell off a little. February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan’s digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper. Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking. March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega-reviews by Dan. April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that’s going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star. For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan’s contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Davinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything. June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn’t designed to suit his needs. July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase… and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shayamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I’d give it a 3.5 This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn’t too shabby. In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn’t be able to keep it fresh, that we’d run out of ideas, and that we wouldn’t be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was “It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs.” Well, I think we’ve significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We’re still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the ‘A’ game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I’d be willing to bet that we’ve provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near fututre. On the upside, it hasn’t gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs. For all of these reasons, I’m willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I’ve also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I’m gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five. And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review. […]
[…] October 10th, 2006 Dan (Ripping off of 1/3 of Adam’s title from last fall) The Doctor: Tell me about the pain in your back. Me: Well, I can stand up and lie on my back just fine. The Doctor: Okay, good. Me: But everything other than that feels like the end of the world. The Doctor: Oh, that’s not good at all. Me: Yeah. A bit less than a year ago, I wrote a little review about getting older, specifically some unrelenting shoulder pain. Well, that was just the tip of iceberg compared to this one. (And all things considered, it hurts so much that it’s not really a laughing matter at this point). Doing nothing stupid, out of the ordinary, or what I’ve not done lots of time before, I managed to make myself bedridden by the simple act of bringing my groceries inside. The only significance of the problem-causing event was that it could be construed as if I had made an awkward motion and tore a muscle at the small of my back. (the ‘could-be-construed as’ part being the awkward motion, not the torn muscle). You choose the caption: 1) Not exactly bringing sexy back. 2) Hehe, you said T12. An awkward motion… the red-headed step child of reasons for (relatively) serious injuries. Similar to last year’s much less serious pain, the type of thing that only happens to the rapidly aging and rapidly aged. Not to steal Adam’s joke completely, but I’ve expected much more from my back than going out in such a girly way. (for those that say, but you were born in November, wouldn’t that be the beginning of model year 1983? Not this guy; it’s becoming more and more obvious that I was old stock, made from parts whose lifespans were already one year short due to sitting on the lot for so long. Sure, my back has serviced me well so far, but with my life expectancy being somewhere around 77 bitter years, it’s awfully early for the frame to have gone bad (one of the axles is already shot). But man, it hurts. I’m normally a big fan of the small of the back; it’s just so …. useful. But not now. It feel like it’s where North Korea did yesterday’s bomb testing. (how’s that for a needlessly topical joke). Oh it smarts real good. The Human Back (Model Year 1982) receives one-and-a-half stars due to its not even lasting half of an expected lifetime before (relatively) serious failure. (No, I’m not being dramatic: being unable to go to work or even do anything other than lie down or stand up shows that the body part has failed, at least temporarily. If someone were unable to attain consciousness, the brain is considered to have failed.) The meager 1.5 stars come from the sort of trouble-free past years of use. […]
[…] December 3rd, 2006 Nate This might be my last traditional review of the year, considering we’re nearing the end of 2006. In this last month of the year, everybody likes to see best and worst of the year lists, so be prepared to be bombarded with those for the next few weeks, culminating with my Top 10 Lists of the Year. Ooooh meta-humor. Ahhh the good old days when TV about Dinosaurs was relegated to them hitting each other with frying pans. If only Prehistoric Park had a little more of that. Imagine, if you will, if Jurassic Park were a TV show. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Dinosaurs running around, tearing up each other and people, and all kinds of exciting action week after week. You could have park rangers dealing with all of the problems of running a park for dinosaurs, getting eaten while trying to feed them. I can’t really think of any good storylines, but this is dinosaurs and people in the same environment! This is like the holy grail of excitement… unless you count the Flintstones, and that horrible movie “Carnosaur”… god that was bad So when I heard about this show, Prehistoric Park, that’s on Animal Planet (originally, it was made for British television, but I would bet that they had a deal with American TV before it was made for funding purposes), I just had to check it out. I was completely let down. There I am with my bowl of popcorn and my dino-pajamas, waiting to see an action-packed hour of dino-tainment, and I’m bored to tears. Why? Well, “Prehistoric Park” is a documentary about an animal preserve where the curator goes back in time through some sort of timecube or stargate:atlantis or something and brings the dinosaurs back to his park, where he doesn’t do anything except keep them in pens and watch their health. That’s not entirely true. The last episode had a large “plot” involving saber-toothed tiger husbandry. You heard me. As a documentary on this completely real place, and the fact that it’s been made for educational purposes, obviously the main point is to tell us all about the behavior of these dinosaurs and how to medically and behaviorally care for them. And that’s about as exciting, as say, a documentary on real tiger husbandry, and who would really care about that? I’ve boiled the conceptual problems down to three areas: First of all, since this park is entirely real (it is a documentary after all) are we to believe that these people have never seen or heard of Jurassic Park? You would think that if you were planning a dinosaur island theme park, Jurassic Park would probably be the first place you would look to do research. And you would realize that no matter how safely you think your T-Rex is kept, it’s not. Rule number 1 about having an island dinosaur preserve… No T-Rexes. Even if you have your giant electrical fences or in the case of Prehistoric Park, just giant wooden fences,he T-Rex is gonna get out. If we learned one thing from “The Lost World”, it’s that San Diego is not prepared for a T-Rex attack. (granted, that was pre-9/11, but I seriously doubt that the D.H.S. has a plan for dinosaur attacks). I understand that it’s very unlikely and that The Lost World was a movie, but this is a documentary, so you’d think these Palienticians would be more responsible. They’re just as bad as Cartographers Secondly, haven’t they ever seen a time-travel movie? In fact there was one that came out about a year or so ago called “A Sound of Thunder” that dealt specifically to going back to the time of dinosaurs and hunting them. When the wrong ones ended up shot, the future (present) was entirely changed. Who knows, they could be abducting the dinosaur that brought their great-great-great etc grandparents together creating a time paradox that could rip apart the space-time continuum. Even if that didn’t happen, think of the change to the animal food chain, what with humans being knocked down a notch… granted, there are a few too many Canadians for my taste. But still, that doesn’t sound like something I want happening on my watch. You people are supposed to be responsible scientists; get your act together. For my third point, I have a confession to make. While this show is presented as a documentary, I’ve recently been informed that it really isn’t and that it’s just presented that way to tell you boring information about dinosaur life that you never had any desire to know. This doesn’t make any sense to me. Nobody was ever around when dinosaurs lived. How do we know that there weren’t McDino-lds walk-throughs, or that specific plants made certain dinos sick. The only evidence we have is bones, and some eggs. Everything in this show is presented so seriously that we automatically take every single word for fact. It’s like if the croc hunter went after velociraptors instead of stingrays…. well the result would still be the same either way. Anyway, they could really tell us anything about dinosaurs (say they all wore blue hats, drank horse urine, and were the largest exporter of human pubis in the world) and we’d believe them. I always liked learning about dinosaurs because there were so many different kinds, all with their own special features and fighting styles. I wanted to see them fight each other and stuff like all kids do. This show totally de-mystifies the whole dinosaur idea, basically showing us the medical side of running a dinosaur theme park, and unless you’re one of the few people who are interested in paleo-veteranary-zoology you’ll be as completely bored as I was. The concept of “Prehistoric Park” gets one star due to having a good idea to start off with and completely wasting it. This show is like watching people oil and polish Transformers instead of letting them do what they do best: shoot laser beams. […]